Where’s the News?: World Bank Warns Globe Could be Cooked by
2060By Dave Lindorff

November 21, 2012 "Information
Clearing House"
- Run a google search of “World Bank” and “climate
change” and you’ll discover that this month the World Bank
released a
major study predicting a global “cataclysm” if
world-wide temperatures increase by a predicted four degrees
celsius (that’s roughly 8 degrees fahrenheit).

But
the articles reporting that information, at least here in
the US, will be almost entirely business magazines like
Bloomberg/Businessweek, or Forbes. Check the
New York Times, and you won’t find the story, at
least so far, and it’s already at least four days old. The
Washington Post had the story on Monday, but it was
tucked away in its business section, which is how it was
treated by most publications that bothered to report on it.
The one exception to this covereage pattern is USA Today,
which on Nov. 19 ran a
short piece on the World Bank report in its news pages.

Is the
news that the World Bank is predicting catastrophe for
billions of people and for life on this entire planet a
business story?

Certainly not!

Any
idiot could tell you, speaking objectively, that the
so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” an entirely political crisis in
which Republicans in Congress have decided to threaten to
crash the US economy by cutting $600 billion from the
federal budget while raising taxes on everyone unless
Democrats agree to cut Social Security and Medicare spending
and to extend a decade of extraordinary tax cuts for the
wealthy, is a minor story compared to a report that the
earth is headed towards climate disaster this century unless
dramatic action is taken to reduce the pace of global
warming caused by the rapacious burning of fossil fuels. Yet
it’s the “Fiscal Cliff” crisis that is getting page one
play, and not just on one day, but every day.

The
truth is, when I talk to business leaders, economists and
stock market analysts in my “other” role as a business
reporter, they tell me that they aren’t really worried about
the country going over that “cliff.” The common refrain --
and the reason you don’t see the stock market already
plunging to half its value in anticipation -- is that this
is a political game in Washington, all for public
consumption by the masses, and that in the end, there is no
real cliff, and no will in either party to push the country
over one. As Dave Roda, southeast regional chief investment
officer at Wells Fargo Private Bank told me when I
interviewed him for an article I was writing for a magazine
called Bank Investment Consultant, while he does
not expect the two parties to reach a deal by the December
31 “cliff” deadline, he also is confident they won’t let the
country fall over the cliff. “They’ll pass something to kick
the can down the road past the president’s second
inauguration and let the new Congress deal with it,” he
predicts. At that point, he says he expects “some kind of a
deal that will involve higher taxes on dividends, capital
gains and the top income bracket.”

That
is in line with what everyone else I interviewed for that
article said.

But
climate change? Unless you’re talking with some know-nothing
Republican politician who also believes that the earth was
created by God six thousand years ago, and that men have one
less rib than women because God took one rib from Adam to
create Eve, or with some scientist who has sold his or her
soul to Exxon Mobil or the Koch Brothers for a grant or a
bribe, everyone who looks a the situation agrees that global
warming is getting increasingly worse, that its pace is
speeding up faster than early predictions, and that it will
be catastrophic in a matter of decades.

So
where is the crisis reporting to match the gravity of the
news?

The
World Bank report avoids being alarmist, but certainly
doesn’t mince words. Created for the organization by the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate
Analytics, it is titled “Turn Down the Heat -- Why a 4°C
Warmer World Must be Avoided.”

The
opening executive summary makes clear both the ominous
future if no action is taken, and the possibility, if
serious action is taken soon, to dodge the bullet:

A 4°C world would be one of unprecedented
heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many
regions, with serious impacts on ecosystems and associated
services. But with action, a 4°C world can be avoided and we
can likely hold warming below 2°C.

The
summary also makes it clear that the situation is dire:

Without further commitments and action to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world is likely to warm
by more than 3°C above the preindustrial climate. Even with
the current mitigation commitments and pledges fully
implemented, there is roughly a 20 percent likelihood of
exceeding 4°C by 2100. If they are not met, a warming of 4°C
could occur as early as the 2060s. Such a warming level and
associated sea-level rise of 0.5 to 1 meter, or more, by
2100 would not be the end point: a further warming to levels
over 6°C, with several meters of sea-level rise, would
likely occur over the following centuries.

Most
US news organizations, or organizations purporting to be in
the “news” business, continue to include climate deniers and
bows to the “other side” of the global warming story on the
few occasions when they even bother to report on it. The
USA Today article cited above on the World Bank report
is a classic of the genre: after saying a few things about
what is in the report, it quotes both an “expert” at the
libertarian Cato Institute, and an “expert” at the
right-wing Heritage Foundation -- both organizations well
lubricated with Oil Industry funding, who pooh-pooh the
report. (Neither of these quoted sources is legitimate.
Patrick Michaels, director of Cato’s Center for the Study of
Science, while a climatologist, between 1998 and 2001 was
“science advisor” to the coal industry-funded Greening Earth
Society and has also been a big recipient of oil industry
support. As for the Heritage Foundation’s David Kreutzer, he
is not a climatologist at all, but rather is an “energy
economist," which makes a reporter's going to him for a
comment a travesty at best.)

Meanwhile, the World Bank report is unequivocal in its
assessment of the crisis. It states that :

•
The concentration of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide
(CO2), has continued to increase from its preindustrial
concentration of approximately 278 parts per million (ppm)
to over 391 ppm in September 2012, with the rate of rise now
at 1.8 ppm per year.

•
The present CO2 concentration is higher than paleoclimatic
and geologic evidence indicates has occurred at any time in
the last 15 million years.

•
Emissions of CO2 are, at present, about 35,000 million
metric tons per year (including land-use change) and, absent
further policies, are projected to rise to 41,000 million
metric tons of CO2 per year in 2020.

•Global mean temperature has continued to
increase and is now about 0.8°C above preindustrial levels.

In
cautious language, the report explains the evidence that in
a world where average temperatures globally rise by 4°C --
and remember, if no action is taken to slow the process
down by significantly reducing the humankind’s production of
CO2, we’re talking about getting there in less than 50
years! -- the ocean surface will become too acidic to
support plankton, the critical base of the oceanic food
chain, droughts will spread and worsen over most of the
world’s temperate and sub-tropical grain-producing regions,
critical river systems will dry up or be substantially
reduced in volume, sea levels will rise dangerously, storms
and floods will worsen dramatically in severity and
frequency, plague-type diseases will spread, and mass
starvation will become more commonplace.

As the
report concludes:

...there is also no certainty that adaptation
to a 4°C world is possible. A 4°C world is likely to be one
in which communities, cities and countries would experience
severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of
these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor
will suffer most and the global community could become more
fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4°C warming
simply must not be allowed to occur—the heat must be turned
down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can
make that happen.

Clearly no such action is going to happen if the media are
covering up the crisis. Politicians like President Obama and
the wretched crew of self-serving trough-feeders populating
the halls of Congress have not got the courage, or perhaps
even the personal interest to tackle climate change, which
inevitably would entail curtailment of capitalist excess,
and end to the concept of “growth is good,” reduction in
living standards, higher taxes for subsidizing mass transit,
R&D and other necessary investments, and a new era of global
cooperation. Only massive public pressure demanding action
could move Washington to take action, and only a campaign of
massive public information about the scale of the looming
disaster could move people to demand such action, given that
action will inevitably mean sacrifice.

To get
the American public to understand that it must give up large
gas-guzzling automobiles, downsize housing, learn to wear
appropriate clothing so that homes and offices can be kept
cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer, subsidize
public transit and give up on making long trips by car, stop
buying useless junk, and accept the need to help other less
fortunate and less wealthy countries of the world also
adapt, will require a responsible media to tell people the
unvarnished truth.

The US
corporate media, unfortunately, are not good at telling the
unvarnished truth (though interestingly, when business news
organizations reported on the World Bank report, many, like
Bloomberg/Businessweek, did not resort to giving time or
space to the "other side" from the corrupt climate deniers).

One
hope may be that if the World Bank, an agency that acts on
behalf of the interests of the global corporatocracy, is
publishing a document this alarming in its analysis of the
climate change crisis, perhaps the corporate elite is
starting to get the picture. In that case, maybe the
corporate media here in the US will before long start
reporting more honestly about it too, and on the front page
instead of in the business section.

I’m
not holding my breath, though.Dave Lindorff is an
award-winning American investigative journalist. He
graduated from Wesleyan University in 1972 with a BA in
Chinese language. He then received an MS in Journalism from
the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in
1975. He served for five years as a correspondent for Hong
Kong and China. He is a founder of the online newspaper
www.ThisCantBeHappening.net .

In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)